KayLynne (Kay) Swyers is a senior studying Digital Storytelling with an emphasis in animation. Kay has a talent for painting and I asked how that translates into the world of digital storytelling. Kay responded with, "My painting skills stem from my love of creating something out of nothing, just air and opportunity. I love that I can pick up a brush and paint a realistic portrait, landscape, or an animal from just looking at the things around me. My painting skills are all self-taught, from a young age I wanted to be able to put what I was imagining on paper. Throughout the years I got better and better, switching to different mediums, trying different types of paper, moving on to better materials, and slowly but fantastically being able to create what exactly was going on in my head. I love the fact that digital art has made way as a fresh and new form of artistic expression and is now more readily available to people like me. I started doing digital art two years ago and it was such a steep learning curve! It took a lot of my traditional skills and threw them out the window, as I had to learn to use a slick surface and not a canvas, and now a pen and not a brush! I began to love digital art though and how much more broadly it can be used. My traditional art skills translated back into my art once I really figured out how to use these programs and it has been a wonderful experience. I can now start to learn how to make these drawings move and talk and dance on the screen, come alive. That is the beauty of art, so much can be done with it, learned from it, expressed with it, and conveyed with it. It truly is a masterpiece all its own no matter how you use it."

You can see here Kay's paintings and their ability to create art digitally. See images and link below. 

With Kay being a senior, a final project has been assigned. Kay mentions, "My final project is a short 3D film about love and the cost of loving someone after they have passed. It will encompass both 3D animation and 2D animation (which I will hand draw frame by frame). This final piece will incorporate both my digital art skills and my traditional skills." 

With this being said, graduation is right around the corner, but Kay has plans. Kay adds, "After graduation, I plan to get a job either doing graphic design or illustration or, ideally, a combination of the two. I want to be able to create using traditional mediums like pencil and paint, while making clean visuals and moving images in graphic design."